Nehlsen Know-How

Recent Blogs

Dr. Joseph Rock, a psychologist at Cleveland Clinic says that buying a lottery ticket for a giant payoff, like the one that recently passed, is healthy for your brain. You start imagining all the wonderful things you can do with $1.5 billion (like $40 million wasn’t enough), and your brain produces serotonin, dopamine and adrenaline.

I never believed barcodes would actually be used to scan groceries. I resisted getting a fax machine, because I thought it was a passing trend (well, it was, but not in the way I thought). And when an employee beseeched me to buy computers for the office in 1985, I said exactly what Rutherford B. Hayes said when Bell demonstrated the telephone to him at the White House, “That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?" The early eighties were a tough time for me technologically. Imagine the struggles I’ve faced in the past three decades.

Perry Snower, owner of Snower Buick Pontiac in Moline, was one of my first start-up clients back in 1972. Perry was a Chicago businessman, new to the area, with a distinctive south side Chicago accent. He stood next to a Buick in the TV studio and hawked his inventory – live, on the air. It wasn’t working. Car sales were not improving despite the large budget he allocated for TV advertising. He asked me to change his image and help him sell more cars.

Two-thirds of my staff is under 40. The designers are under 30. Their eyes have not yet begun to develop sight-robbing cataracts. They understand the latest technologies and breeze through websites, apps and social media with ease. But they don’t spend as much money as I do for food, clothing, vacations – you name it. Boomers spend more than any generation today, and more than their age group has in the past. According to Huff Post Business, “The 50+ demo is wealthy, vast, and growing, and marketers would be smart to take notice.”

All energy starts in the center. Let’s be clear – I am not a physics expert. I’m not even sure what physics is about except for what I learn on The Big Bang Theory. But the premise that “all energy starts in the center” has applications in many parts of our lives. Let’s take marketing, for instance. Before you throw your marketing message into the already frenzied cacophony of voices competing for attention, stop for a moment and look in the center.